AQUIFERious: Florida’s Springs

February 19 – May 14, 2017

AQUIFERious: Florida’s Springs is a multi-media art experience in the truest sense. Based on Margaret Ross Tolbert’s award-winning book AQUIFERious, the exhibition will juxtapose Tolbert’s dramatic, large-scale springs paintings and eloquent poetry with contributing artists’ and scientists’ photographs, videos, cartography and writings. Featured will be the underwater photography by Jill Heinerth, Mark Long and Tom Morris, who have experienced the springs first hand as cave divers with landmark accomplishments in spring explorations. Also featured are maps of the springs by artist and cave diver Eric Hutcheson, along with Georgia Shemitz, showing the complex passages of the aquifer.

Among the most remarkable natural wonders of the Sunshine State is the seldom-seen, underground Floridan aquifer system, a 100,000 square mile life force that reaches into neighboring states and feeds more than 1,000 freshwater springs throughout Florida. AQUIFERious: Florida’s Springs is intended to give the audience a greater understanding and appreciation of Florida’s subterranean water system, while celebrating its extraordinary beauty and that of the fragile springs that arise from the system’s depths.